Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said this week that he intentionally took his nine children to a neighbor with chicken pox to purposefully expose them to the disease rather than vaccinate.
“Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin, a Republican, told radio station WKCT in Bowling Green on Tuesday, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children. They were miserable for a few days, and they all turned out fine.”
The governor added that he doesn’t think the government should mandate vaccines.
“If you are worried about your child getting chickenpox or whatever else, vaccinate your child,” he said. “But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason, they choose otherwise. This is America. The federal government should not be forcing this upon people. They just shouldn’t.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns against intentionally exposing children to chickenpox, and that the disease “can be serious and can lead to severe complications and death, even in healthy children.”
The Northern Kentucky Health Department announced last week that it’s dealing with an outbreak of chickenpox at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and Assumption Academy, a private Catholic high school in Walton, with 32 cases reported as of last week.
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